


where there's a will, there's a way

by advantagetexas



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, theres technical talk theres poetry theres all kinds of good stuff, theyre fixing up a shit car that nursey bought bc hes a dumbass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 06:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6971305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advantagetexas/pseuds/advantagetexas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nursey brings home literally the worst junker car Dex has ever seen and then makes it out to be the best thing he's ever done. At some point, Dex starts to agree with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where there's a will, there's a way

“Your entire front end is out of alignment, toe, camber, _and_ caster,” Dex says, crawling out from under the front of the stupid “vintage” (read: shitty) jeep that Nursey had just bought and practically dragged over to the haus. “Your tie rod ends are bent all to fuck, and I’m pretty sure your brake pads haven’t been changed since Bush was president. _Senior_ ,” he adds for emphasis, as Nursey just gives him that infuriatingly chill shrug. “Your transmission is leaking, the exhaust pipe has a hole in it, and your CAT is rattling like a motherfucker. Catalytic converter,” he clarifies when he sees the confused look on the other D-man’s face. “Honestly I don’t even know why you bought this hunk of junk.”

“I figured, y’know, that we could fix it up? It’s still got good bones even if some of the other stuff is shit. It could be like a pet project,” Nursey explains, patting the peeling paint on the driver’s side door fondly as he talks. It’s honestly kinda cute, much as it pains Dex to admit it.

“What made you think that I’d want to help you?” he asks sarcastically, and regrets it the second he sees Nursey’s smile falter for a second.

“I dunno, I thought it might be a good thing for our chemistry? Kinda like that flour baby project they make little kids do. Plus, once you hear what I named this baby you wouldn’t even dream of turning me down.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“William Jessica Poindexter,” Nursey starts, as Dex rolls his eyes, “meet Moira Nurse.”

“You named your shitty junker car after my mother?” Dex asks incredulously, one eyebrow raised.

“Why _wouldn’t_ I name my soon-to-be-perfect car after the sweetest woman I’ve ever met?”

“Y’know, sometimes I really regret letting you meet my family during parents’ weekend,” Dex sighs, as Nursey throws an arm roughly around his shoulders in some approximation of a sidehug.

The rest of the night was spent looking up and ordering parts and tools. Aside from a few screwdrivers and a blowtorch (for some inexplicable reason that, if they had to guess, probably had something to do with flaming shots), the haus was entirely devoid of any and all tools.

Most of the time Dex had to talk Nursey out of buying unneeded and frankly ridiculous shit, like chrome exhaust piping, or the world’s ugliest sounding muffler (thanks Flomaster). They called it a night after a thirty minute debate on whether or not to buy a “La Cucaracha” horn that had drawn in and polarized the entirety of the haus. Much to Tango’s chagrin, there were now two different versions of Team Roaches.  

_X_

“Can you hand me the 3/8 drive 12 millimeter socket?” Dex asks, holding his hand out from under the car, the other balancing holding a bolt for the pipe bracket and a large, slippery ratchet. He waited for almost a full minute, listening to the clinking of chrome tools in the toolbox, before sighing and sliding out from under the car, careful to avoid knocking into the jack stands.

“I had no clue what you meant,” Nursey admits, as Dex shoots him a disappointed look after immediately finding the correct socket.  “I thought I could just wing it.”

“Are you telling me you’ve never used a ratchet before?”

“I grew up in a brownstone in the middle of Manhattan, when would I have needed to know how to use a socket wrench?” Nursey replies.

“Alright then, Mr. Private School, listen up,” Dex says, launching into an explanation of how a 3/8 wrench differs from a ¼ and a ½, and the difference between metric and imperial sizing. He actually gets really animated about it, but when he looks up, Nursey is just staring at him with this weird look plastered across his face.

“Were you even listening at all?” he asks, suddenly very frustrated, if he was going to bother explaining something, the very least Nursey could do was listen for once.

“I can pay attention to two things at once, Dex, it’s not that hard,” Nursey replies, shaking off whatever was bothering him.

“Well maybe you should spend _more_ time paying attention to me instead of thinking about how hot that girl in our British Lit class is. That’s what it was, right?”

“Something like that,” Nursey says with a half laugh. Dex just sighs and slides back under the car. Nursey presses something cold into his hand and he brings it up to look at it. It’s a 12 millimeter socket with a 3/8 drive, and honestly? He’s actually really surprised and impressed.

Seemingly reading his mind, Nursey says, “Told you I was actually listening,” and Dex can almost hear the over-proud smirk in his voice.

_X_

“Why don’t you recite some poetry, Nurse. Might make the time go quicker,” Dex suggests on a whim one day when they’re hand sanding the paint off the car, one of them on either side.

“I mean, I don’t really have anything memorized in its entirety,” Nursey says, voice slightly muffled by the car in between them.

“Just make something up then,” Dex replies, gesturing vaguely with his free hand, even though no one is around to see it. They sit in the quiet of the March afternoon for a moment, Nursey seemingly thinking of something to say. He hums a few bars of a song Dex doesn’t recognize before clearing his throat.

“It’s not…it probably won’t rhyme,” he says, almost sounding unsure of himself.

“I won’t chirp you about it,” Dex reassures him.

“You promise?”

“For the next half hour this is a chirp-free zone, Nurse,” he confirms.

“Well…alright then…burning bridges, uh, burning bridges without division between what catches fire and what stays safe, I just pour the kerosene and toss the match and hope that something changes, because if nothing changes, then I just feel empty in the wake of the ashes in my lungs, drowning me with every step.” Nursey’s voice trails off at the end, almost as if he’s afraid someone besides Dex will hear him, and Dex finds himself completely stuck, completely lost in both extreme admiration for Nursey’s ability to come up with something so emotionally potent so quickly, and…something else. Something he can’t quite put his finger on that’s making his skin heat more than usual.

“Should I…do you want me to keep going?” Nursey asks, unsure of himself again.

“Yeah, maybe…maybe do one more?” Dex says, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

“Oh, okay. Uh…um…exeunt, exeunt, exeunt, this could be the end, the last bit of all of it. We both know how this ends. The inevitability of the end of it all falling down around our heads like a shower of broken glass and shattered hearts turned into a bloody halo that crowns us kings of what might have been, if we only had the chance.”

And that’s when Dex knows. He finally _understands_ what the feeling constricting his throat is, what the heat radiating from his chest is.

He is _hopelessly_ in love with Derek Nurse.

He says nothing, though, the two of them just continuing to sit in silence until the late winter sun finally disappears from the horizon.

_X_

Dex pumps the brakes nervously, the pedal firm under his foot. He and Nursey had replaced the master cylinder last week, finally fixing the sponginess it’d had before. He jumps just slightly as Nursey opens the passenger door, climbing into the car beside him.

“Ready to go, Poindexter?” he asks, grinning like an idiot. God, Dex hated that expression. All it did was remind him of how crazily in love he was with Nursey, and about how there was no chance in hell that it would ever work out.

“What if it doesn’t run?” he says, fiddling with the keychain attached to the key in the ignition. It was a little plastic lobster, just something small that he’d brought back from Maine at the beginning of the school year. He’d given it to Nursey as a joke gift, but it had been on his key ring ever since.

“Will, you’ve put so much time and work into this thing that if it doesn’t work I will be _insanely_ surprised.” He puts a hand over Dex’s on the center gear shifter, sending a shiver up his spine. “Have a little faith in the chemistry, bro.”

“It’s not the chemistry I’m doubting,” Dex mumbles to himself, hesitantly shrugging off Nursey’s hand to put his hand on the key. He closes his eyes and quickly twists his wrist. The engine sputters once…twice…then finally turns over with a magnificent roar. Dex breathes a sigh of relief.

“Dude, we got it working!” he enthuses, opening his eyes and looking over at Nursey. The look that Nursey’s giving him is far from what he expected, though he can’t really explain why.

“Dex?”

“Yeah, Nurse?”

“Can you, like, lower your seat a couple inches?”

Dex raises an eyebrow at that request, but complies anyway, putting the seat down as far as it’ll go.

“Just wait there,” Nursey says, climbing out of the car and slamming the door behind him.

“Bro, what the fuck are y-“ Dex starts, before his door opens and suddenly Nursey is climbing into his lap, straddling him, even, and Dex’s brain just goes into full on shut down mode. He doesn’t notice the door closing again, or the fact that the car is still running, because all he can think about is that Nursey is _on top of him_ , and then Nursey’s hand is in his hair, and then Nursey is so _incredibly_ close to him, and then…Dex closes the gap, grabbing the front of Nursey’s stupid tanktop and pressing their lips together. Nursey kisses him back, without even a second’s hesitation, with more passion and hunger than any other kiss Dex has ever had (which, admittedly, isn’t much of a challenge). When they finally, lamentably, break apart, they’re both left panting like wild animals.

“I’ve wanted to do that for the longest fucking time,” Nursey mumbles, his breath tickling Dex’s neck as he presses soft, slow kisses into it. “You’re so hot when you fix stuff, it’s been driving me fucking crazy.”

“Says the guy that almost made me pop a boner by reciting poetry. Speaking of which,” Dex says, swallowing hard as Nursey grazes his teeth across his pale collarbone, “you gotta stop doing that. Like, _right_ now.”

“Too far too soon?” Nursey asks, leaning back with a look of concern on his face.

“No, just…we can’t bang in a car named after my mom, dude. And _especially_ not right in front of the haus. Bitty gets mentally scarred by things often enough that I feel like we should at least try to save some of his precious innocent soul.” Nursey bursts into a fit of laughter at that, climbing off of Dex’s lap and back into the passenger seat as Dex rolls his eyes.

“I can’t believe I accidentally cockblocked myself 8 months in advance,” Nursey complains, still laughing to himself.

“Honestly, I’ve never heard anything that sounded more like you than that in my entire life,” Dex says, smiling and leaning over to kiss Nursey’s cheek before putting the car in gear and driving off toward the dorms.

**Author's Note:**

> so there's a metric shitton of technical stuff about cars in this fic because i took my ASEs this week and all the information is still packed into my brain tbh (i passed brakes, steering and suspension, AND light maintenance tho, so at least it all paid off), but there's also poetry in it that I wrote that I hope isnt too horrible? i should really start finding better, more legit poems to use tbh


End file.
